Ay, dios mio!

Why I'm happy to be at the Santa Domingo shiny clean airport entrance:
-Bus infested with roaches. The first I discovered after I brushed at the tickle on my neck and crushed a nickle-sized roach. The others just kept coming. For 10 HOURS.
-The two-hour wait when we got stuck in mud at the border.
-The DR cabby that got lost, and after he'd found his way, started taking one-way streets the wrong way at high speeds, until we met with lots of oncoming traffic. The fact that it took him ten minutes to successfully parallel park so that oncoming traffic (honking and irate) could get around us. The fact that we were just too tired to argue when he gave us our change and I realized he'd double-charged what he'd quoted us.
-The drunk Americans who were at the airport in line in front of us, in their 40's, repeatedly falling over, and just unbearable to be around. We decided that four hours at the gate might be overkill, left the line and plunked down at the airport entrance.
-IN 3.5 HOURS, MY PLANE TO MY BOY AND PUPPY TAKES OFF!!

Orevwa, Haiti!

I'm leaving first thing in the morning on a bus bound for the DR.

Kind of an anticlimactic way to end the trip; got sick and so saw a LOT of the inside of my hotel room. Oh well. It just means that there is even more reason to come back soon!

My translator brought me going-away presents! Too kind. He didn't last time, and I was a bit embarrassed when I realized that it doesn't seem he brought anything for anyone else. This time he said, "Of course I want to give presents; you are my friend." That is a big deal. I definitely get the feeling that, though strangers can be friendly here, they tend to put me through a trial period. When people have dropped their guard with me and started to consider me a friend, I have been treated like family. It is a big honor.

I learned a lot this visit, and made some big headway with my project. During my last three interviews, I found myself bored, because I had already heard everything they had to say. That is a good sign that I have done enough interviewing. One of the doctors, who I couldn't possibly like more, read my assessment and said that every single bit of it was consistent with the reality at the hospital. I feel I am in a great place to transition from information-gathering to action-taking!

This trip has seemed ridiculously short, but I am very excited to go home to all of the wonderful people, projects, and a certain amazing dog that make my life at home so grand.

I will post pictures upon my return, and then will hopefully be back here and posting again before too long.

Demen

All plans for today fell through! So disappointing. But fortunately, I was able to get all of my interviewing done today, save for one last conversation. If I play my cards right, I can get that last interview, then make the trip to Milot tomorrow to see my friend! While I'm there, I hope to approach someone about making a radio segment to get community support for my project. Fingers crossed.

Chyen

Sadly, I will not be traveling to PaP after all. But I am determined to make tomorrow into an adventure! Right now I am torn between taking a taptap to Milot to try to track down a friend for a visit and work-related interview, and taking a trip with a community health worker into the deeply poverty-stricken nearby city that is literally built on trash. Apparently that trip would involve a boat-ride.

As I sat on the boulevard today waiting for my dinner meeting while watching the sea lapping at the trash-covered beach, a dog with a wagging tail made a bee-line for me and put its head on my lap. All other dogs I have encountered here have wanted nothing to do with me, and I am not surprised. Most are skittish and scarred but tough. Even dogs who are "owned by" people tend to spend their time on the streets, poking through trash for morsels of food that humans may have missed. From the looks of them, the dogs don't tend to find many morsels of food, and people have not been kind to them. All too often, I see scars in the shapes of objects that I imagine were used to intentionally strike the animals. All this is to say that I was very moved when my new canine friend sought me out today and showed me affection. After I patted her head for a few moments, she curled up at my feet for the duration of my wait.

Check back on Thursday, dear readers, to see if I am able to pack adventure into my Wednesday "stuck" in Northern Haiti.

krèm glase!

I was very surprised to find that I have readers, including readers who are frustrated when I don't post. So I am back.

It is amazing to me how Haitian days can seem so meandering and slow to me, and then in retrospect the relationships built, knowledge gained, and work accomplished can continue to surpass my expectations.

Some highlights of the past few days:
-climbing along the very base of a mountain where it meets the sea, up to beautiful ruins of a fort (including huge cannons) that is an active site for voodoo ceremonies
-learning that "mountains beyond mountains" is a Haitian proverb most commonly used to express the concept that you shouldn't pick on someone, because even if you take them down, they probably have back-up that's even bigger than they are
-starting to understand bits of Creole and French conversations, and starting to be understood when I use the occasional Creole phrase. The killer is that my ear still can't distinguish between the two languages!
-finagling it so that I am going to Port au Prince on Wednesday to meet with the national org that oversees the local work I am trying to build upon, and I will be having a dinner tomorrow with a representative from the international org that oversees the national work. Such opportunities!
-speaking for hours with the extremely enthusiastic national celebrity DJ/ social activist who is committed to giving radio time to the issues I am working on.
-hearing said celebrity DJ exclaim such things as, "I have said many times, God should strike me down if ever I run for public office." and "All I would have to do is say my name to anyone who kidnapped me, and they would release me, because I am me, and I am good."
-gaining solid perspective about next steps for my work, and getting enough downtime to start taking those steps, and
-"wum waisin" ice cream! For whatever reason, I have been obsessing about getting this flavor of ice cream for my entire visit, and haven't been able to despite the fact that my hotel tends to serve just vanilla, chocolate, and rum raisin. Sweet success tonight was followed by laughter from my travel companions, as they discovered that I hate raisins and therefore was really just after rum ice cream.

Tuesday here, Wednesday in PaP, Thursday back here, then Friday to the DR and then home!

Bon nuit!

Bonte

Today has made me feel like this trip was worth making, because next steps are becoming clearer as I talk to more people. This is a complex system, with obstacles galore (some of which are not readily apparent), so my work is cut out for me. But finding allies and a sense of direction with this work feels pretty great.

Tomorrow I am going on a roadtrip, and will be reunited with one of the people I feel closest to in this country. He is a truly kind soul, and just because he already knew my father, he went way out of his way on my last trip to welcome me, and treated me like family. When I called him today to let him know I would be coming, he sounded overjoyed, and kept repeating, "I am waiting for you! I am waiting for you!"

Ah to bring back some of the warmth of interactions here to my chilly New England city. When I got home last time, I found myself smiling and acknowledging each passerby on the street, and it seriously weirded people out. True, it is nice to not have people stare and shout "blan" (white person) when I walk through my city, but it would be nice if everyone at home didn't work quite so hard to ignore everyone around them. Prepare yourself New England, for I am on a mission to make you a friendlier place.

Bon Nui

A slow day, with two very short interviews in the morning followed by many hours of typing up notes.

Nothing much to report. Learned today that the one-legged man who takes great pains to rake the hospital grounds each day is not actually paid by the hospital. And that he has been doing the raking for six years. There is so much to think about and learn from each person's story...

Had a delicious pumpkin soup today, with plantains, potatoes, greens, and a surprise hunk of meat at the bottom.

There is a bird outside our window that sounds like a dying vulture that sometimes can scream like a baby. Okay, so my words fail to capture the god-awful racket it is making, but suffice it to say it ain't pretty.

dòmi...

A long day, with some glimmers of hope mixed in with lots of frustration.

On the other hand, a wonderful day for food. My favorite breakfast ever is served at this hotel, I am not sick of the Power Bar lunch (yet), and for dinner I found a heavenly beef stew with plantains and dumplings at the restaurant at the corner, with orange pineapple ice cream to wash it down.

Language Overload

We arrived safe into Cap Haitien early this evening, to a warm welcome and tight hugs. I have missed these people and this place more than I realized.

For those who want to learn more about the place, click here. Checking that link out made me realize how frightfully little I knew about the history of the town. A good lesson indeed.

So my travel companion and I did quite well for ourselves in communicating our needs in Spanish while in the DR. We rarely were able to determine what was being said back to us, but our complicated requests yielded the proper results (breakfast a half hour earlier than scheduled, a taxi waiting for us afterward, two copies of our receipts, and a deal to have the hotel hold our luggage during the time we have to kill when we go back). It made me sad when I realized how far I am from fluent, or even conversational, but hey, it was a pretty successful learning experience.

On our bus ride, it was a trainwreck of trying to find common tongues to communicate with our stewardess (bus attendant?) and fellow passengers. French, Creole, Spanish, English, and probably a few other languages were used in turn. During our wait on the DR/Haitian border, there was a near-riot of small children desperate to get in the bus to get food/money/anything from me, the "blan" they had spied through the bus windows. The bus driver noticed the frenzied activity, and dispersed the crowd by taking off his belt and swinging it wildly around his head. This did the trick. The kids held their distance. Later, I noticed that two of the children were speaking to each other in sign language, and I strained to see if I could recognize any signs/gestures.

Then, at the hotel, my few words of Creole came back. My mind consists of pure language mush now.

There is a nine-month-old sweet girl on this trip. Big bonus!

My after-dinner conversation/meeting was very productive! I am hopeful that this trip will move my project along nicely. Fingers crossed; the project is so necessary, but very very hard to make progress on due to obstacles aplenty.

D.R.

Hello!

After a wonderful and loving sendoff in NY, my travel partner and I made it to the DR earlier than scheduled! Quite different from my travel karma on my last trip down here, at least so far.

We happened to stumble upon Santa Domingo's Independence Day celebration. Madness and wonderful costumes and music abounded. Our enjoyment of the day was only dampened slightly when my travel partner's camera was tugged forcefully from where it was wrapped around her wrist, and it was lost to a little pickpocketer.

It has been great to have a chance to practice my Spanish, and my mind will surely be boggled in the early morning when we become immersed in French and Creole, on a bus en route to Northern Haiti.

I will post again when I am in O'Kap and have internet and down time, though that won't necessarily be tomorrow.

Back!!

In 12 hours, I will hopefully have boarded my plane back to Cap Hatien (via the DR)!! I will hopefully be able to update from there. Very sad to be missing WMSHC, but very excited to be returning, and to hopefully but some ideas into action.